NBA players make a LOT of money

Still, even with salaries in professional sports having skyrocketed for well over a decade now, it’s still staggering — or sickening, depending on your point of view — to view just how much NBA players can make in a sport where a considerably large pie is sliced between a relatively small amount of recipients.

A poster on RealGM, my favorite basketball message board, recently took the time to compile a list of the 100 highest paid players in NBA history, and the numbers are eye-popping. A disclaimer — I did not personally check every single total on the list, which includes monies not yet paid in some case, and probably needs some level of adjustment for inflation. (Cut me some slack, it’s August.) But I did cherry-pick about 10 for cross-reference with basketball-reference.com, and the numbers jibed.

Crazy as it might sound, you can argue that players like Bryant and LeBron James (No. 24, $149,745,913) are actually underpaid, considering the tens of millions of dollars of merchandise and tickets they will have moved over the course of their careers. Tim Duncan was never that kind of box-office draw, but it’s safe to assume the Spurs feel he was worth every penny after anchoring their four championship teams. Even Garnett, the highest-paid player in history, made up for his comparative lack of rings and profile by performing at historically elite level for most of his 17-year career.

It’s when you drop just a bit further on the list that you really have to wonder what NBA GMs are thinking when they agree to hand out lottery-ticket contracts. Case in point: Joe Johnson (No. 6 ,$198,647,490), he of the 17.8 career scoring average and zero championship rings, has made virtually the same amount of cash as Michael Jordan (No. 87, $90,235,000) and Scottie Pippen (No. 52, $109,192,430) COMBINED.

No wonder Danny Ferry couldn’t wait to trade him.

And he isn’t the only questionable recipient. Rashard Lewis, Juwan Howard and Stephon Marbury (combined All-Star games: five) all pulled in at least $151 million. Brian Grant, whose biggest achievement was finishing fifth in rebounding in 2002-03, banked almost $110 million. Mike Bibby outgained Hakeem Olajuwon by 82 grand despite about a quarter as good. And on, and on, and on.

Granted, the main reason so many huge names are missing from the list, and so many forgettable ones are on it, is the vast amount of money available in the modern NBA, thanks in no small part to the Magic/Bird/Jordan triumvirate, the 1990s arena boom and the increasingly insatiable demand for live sports programming. Yet it’s still mind-boggling to see how much of that money is poorly invested.

Not surprisingly, the Spurs are not among the teams guilty of profligate spending. They’ve gotten an excellent return on their biggest investments: Duncan, David Robinson (No. 45, $116,500,12), Tony Parker (No. 48, $110,946,521) and Manu Ginobili (No. 80, $93,725,614), all of whom have a starting spot in the franchise’s all-time starting five.

Hey, if you’re going to pay through the nose for something, you should have something to show for it. Like four of these.